FireCloud (SASE)
A managed cloud-based firewall-as a-service that protects remote users against Internet-based security threats
Role
Lead Designer
Category
UX Design/UX Research
Duration
2 years
Two Phase Product
We identified two products that needed to be built in the beginning stages of FireCloud: Internet Access to protect remote users when browsing the internet, and Private Access to protect remote users when accessing company resources. The decision was made to build Internet Access first, then follow up with Private Access a year later. This entire release was planned to take about 2 years.
Serengeti Approach
WatchGuard designated our team with the role of a "Serengeti team" which meant our team was strategically put together to ensure a strong product with quick turnaround. Since SASE was a technology that was taking over the market rapidly, WatchGuard wanted to be able to deliver a strong, competitive product in a very short timeline. I was the chosen UX designer to lead this effort.
Research
Customer Interviews: We identified some of our top customers who we would work closely with to design this product. These customers were also chosen due to experience with other competitors SASE solutions, so we could make sure we stay competitive with their features and design.
Competitive Analysis: Many competitors were studied to identify what other SASE solutions did well, and where there was room for improvement. The biggest discovery was how complex it was to setup these other solutions, even with some of the industry leaders. This discovery really led us forward with the mission that we want to build the easiest to deploy and manage SASE solution in the industry.
UX Workshops: We held a couple of UX workshops, both with the product team as well as extended ones with our sales team and customers, to figure out what we needed to build. These workshops were a few hours each, but allowed all of our stakeholders, customers, and product/development teams to all be on the same page when it came to what needed to be built. This buy in assured our team knew what needed to be built, the sales team to know exactly how they were going to sell it, and our customers to give their input as to what would get them to buy it.
Design
The product went through many rounds of design and iteration. Initial mockups were created to share with customers and sales teams, but after conducting the rest of the research, our end product had evolved greatly from the initial mockups. The research also put a pause on some earlier requirements that were labeled as post launch given the need for them wasn't as important to our customers.
Once a design was agreed on by all the stakeholders, a few rounds of usability testing was conducted. All the usability testing was conducted through a moderated Figma test with a complex prototype. We went through three stages of user testing, fixing issues in each stage. By the end of our testing, the product did not have any more usability issues, and met the needs of all our customers.
FireCloud Private Access
This entire process was repeated for the next stage of the product, FireCloud Private Access. We identified some new customers, as well as some old customers who participated in the research for Internet Access, to help with the research for Private Access. More surveys, field studies, and interviews were conducted with these customers which helped influence the design.
Since the team had already gone through this process once, the second time around was much more efficient. Once the user testing was complete on the design, we were able to turn around FireCloud Private Access in just several months.
Post Launch
FireCloud has become one of WatchGuard's best selling products over the first couple months after launching with more interest being generated each month. The high degree of user testing and user research has led FireCloud to be one of the easiest deployments in WatchGuard's stack of products and is consistently driving new business with many customers citing ease of deployment and management as the reason for adopting the solution. The forward thinking design has also kicked off many initiatives within other products to improve similar features based off the feedback from FireCloud (such as the new design to log search, reporting dashboards, and restructuring of navigation items).
As with any MVP, we continue to iterate on the product as it evolves with more features and usability improvements. Continuous user testing and field studies are conducted to identify areas to improve the user experience. However, FireCloud is off to a really good start showing analytics such as a rage click rate of only .5% vs a platform wide average of 4.7% and a u-turn rate of only 3% vs a platform rate of 10%. Additionally, only 2% of all feedback documented from customers have come back as an improvement to the UI with the rest being additional features customers would like to see in the product.